Do we like Ronald dela Rosa?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Serious ICC allegations that no court has decided, a manhunt, and little verifiable good in what we could open.
Ronald 'Bato' dela Rosa is a Mindanao cop through and through. He graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1986, ran the Davao City police under then-mayor Rodrigo Duterte in 2012-13, then became Duterte's national police chief for 21 months. He went on to head the Bureau of Corrections and won a Senate seat in 2019, then came third in the 2025 race with 20.5 million votes. GMA News describes him as one of the Duterte family's closest allies.
The story everyone's asking about is the drug war. An ICC warrant, issued secretly in November 2025 and unsealed in May 2026, alleges he is an 'indirect co-perpetrator' of murder as a crime against humanity between 2016 and 2018, involving at least 32 deaths. Prosecutors call those cases samples of a possible broader pattern. Police say more than 6,000 suspected dealers died in official operations and that they resisted arrest, which activists dispute, and he denies involvement in illegal killings. None of this has been tested at trial.
Then it turned into a political thriller. On 11 May he turned up at the Senate, NBI agents tried to serve the warrant and a staircase chase followed, and senators put him in protective custody. Two nights later gunshots rang out when the Senate sergeant-at-arms fired at NBI agents, and he left the complex around 2.30am on 14 May, reportedly with Senator Robin Padilla. The Senate president denied the tension was staged to help him go, and he hasn't been seen publicly since.
On the harm test, we found nothing from him on LGBTQ+ people, women or the climate in what we could open. What we did find is the drug war, and his own pushback on it. In a 2022 ANC interview he said Duterte never ordered the killing of anyone involved in drugs, which VERA Files rated false. In the Senate he pushed anti-drug bills, including the death penalty for importing or making illegal drugs. Whether his role amounts to a crime is for a court, which is why this is a close call.
The legal fight is messy. The Supreme Court voted 9-5-1 on 20 May to refuse his request to stop authorities arresting him, but said that was not a ruling on the merits and left the main petition open. The Palace says the warrant is valid. Since then he hasn't surrendered, and officials have said they would hand him to the ICC if caught. Viral 'he's been arrested' posts were debunked in August.
The good stuff is thin on what we could verify. Millions of Filipinos voted for him in 2025, and Vice President Sara Duterte called the attempt to enforce the warrant 'a wrong move'. He says he did everything for the country and did not enrich himself. We couldn't open a source for the charity and relief work that turned up in searches, so we haven't counted it.